Community Youth Council member, Mitch Maginnis says, "What we're doing here today is renewing Pier Park, giving it a better more presentable look. Today, we're just cleaning up the parking lots and re-painting all of the yellow lines, as you can see, they're kind of faded a little bit, so we're just giving them a new look."

A new look for a new audience. Community Youth Council members say they know how great Pier Park can be despite its role in a major gang bust in 2010.

Urban Renewal Committee Co-Chair, Emma Kreutzer says, "They kind of have a bad reputation, with like the drug busts, and things like that in the past and that's really not what this park is here for. When we brought the skate park in, however many years ago that was, this park was like the park to be at."

And police say little things like re-painting the parking lots, could even keep that crime away.

"Well, a cleaner everything keeps crime away," says Officer Butch Hearst, "If you go back to the broken window theory, if you keep everything up then the people respect it more."

Kreutzer notes, "It will affect kids, right now we're standing next to a little kids pool which will affect the parents who drop their kids off because they park in this parking lot and there's nowhere to park at this point. And then just the overall look of this park, it affects little boys playing baseball to the 80-year-old walking on the hike bike trail. It affects everyone who comes through here."

Youth Council members say they hope to make the park a better place for people who they know will treat it right.

Kreutzer says, "It just makes the park look nicer and altogether cleans it up and helps it give a cleaner look."

Hearst says, "We want people to come out and enjoy our community, have a good time, as you probably notice, there's a lot of people that come in at noontime and eat. That's what we want, we want to make this a nice place for everybody."

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